Perigal, the envelope of which bore the Polperro postmark.  This had told her that the despairing writer had gone to the place of their prospective honeymoon, where the contrast between his present agony of soul and the promised happiness, on which he had set so much store, was such, that if he did not immediately hear from Mavis, he was in danger of taking his life.  There had been more to the same effect.  Immediately, all thought of self had been forgotten; she had hurried out to send a telegram to Perigal, telling him to expect a surprise to-day.

She had confided her dear Jill to Mrs Farthing’s care.  After telling her wondering landlady that she would not be away for more than one night, she had hurried (with a few belongings) to the station, ultimately to get out at Liskeard, where she had to take the local railway to Looe, from which an omnibus would carry her to Polperro.  Perigal had met her train at Liskeard, her telegram having led him to expect her.

He was greatly excited and made such ardent love to her that, upon her arrival at Looe, she already regretted her journey and had purposed returning by the next train.  But there was nothing to take her back before morning; against her wishes, she had been constrained to spend the night at Looe.

Here Perigal insisted on staying also.

Mavis, as she looked back on the last four days, and all that had happened therein, could not blame herself.  She now loved Perigal more than she had ever believed it possible for woman to love man; she belonged to him body and soul; she was all love, consequently she had no room in her being for vain regrets.

When she was alone, as now, her pride was irked at the fact of her not being a bride; she believed that the tenacious way in which she had husbanded her affections gave her every right to expect the privilege of wifehood.  It was, also, then she realised that her very life depended upon the continuance of Perigal’s love:  she had no doubt that he would marry her with as little delay as possible.  Otherwise, the past was forgotten, the future ignored:  she wholly surrendered herself to her new-born ecstasy begotten of her surrender.  He was the world, and nothing else mattered.  So far as she was concerned, their love for each other was the beginning, be-all, and end of earthly things.

It was a matter of complete indifference to her that she was living at Polperro with her lover as Mrs and Mr Ward.

It may, perhaps, be wondered why a girl of Mavis’s moral susceptibilities could be so indifferent to her habit of thought as to find such unalloyed rapture in a union unsanctified by church and unprotected by law.  The truth is that women, as a sex, quickly accommodate themselves to such a situation as that in which Mavis found herself, and very rarely suffer the pangs of remorse which are placed to their credit by imaginative purists.  The explanation may be that women live closer to nature than men; that they